Gypsy Girl
by Morgane
Summary: Many years before she becomes Jenny Calendar, a young gipsy girl listens to a lesson about vengeance, duty and family debt


TITLE: Gypsy Girl  
  
AUTHOR: Morgane  
  
EMAIL: salzkartoeffelchen@web.de  
  
DISCLAIMER: If I told you that I owned Buffy, would you actually believe me?!  
  
IMPORTANT: this is my first (very short and meaningless) Buffy fic so please show leniency towards a poor non-native speaker!  
  
SUMMARY: Many years before she becomes Jenny Calendar, a young gipsy girl listens to a lesson about vengeance, duty and family debt.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*  
  
GYPSY GIRL  
  
~*~*~*~*~*  
  
She is an oddly beautiful child.  
  
Standing on the hill where her people reside this summer and enjoying the fresh breeze out there, she attracts the attention of many a passer-by with her sleek black hair and the stark contrast it creates to her pale satin-textured skin, but in spite of her undeniable beauty nobody actually stops to bid her a good day. Something about her eyes, too old and too wise for someone this young, tells them just too clearly that this girl is of another species, that she belongs into an alien world where myths and legends still rule the living and so they avoid her even before they see the dark-haired gypsy approaching her.   
  
"Janna", he greets her, his words incomprehensible to the people to their feet.  
  
Tearing her eyes away from the blood-red afternoon sun, she tilts her head back at an odd angle that can't possibly be comfortable to look up at him through long silken lashes. "Uncle Enyos", she returns in an equal tone, her voice clear and melodic, unstained from the accent his one possesses. "Have the visitors already gone away?"  
  
Enyos nods, his dark eyes, so like and unlike her own, very serious. "When you were at school."  
  
She is barely able to suppress a little sigh of relief. She doesn't like these strange people who eye her with frightening indifference, who make her feel small and insignificant as if she were nothing but a nuisance to her tribe, but she knows that Enyos and the others look up to them and so she never voices such. "What have they told you?" she asks instead, laying a curiosity into her words she doesn't feel; it's not like their nocturnal visitors have ever brought anything beside stories of pain, suffering and terror with them. "Is the curse still working?"   
  
"Yes. Angelus still suffers." A strange glow of satisfaction is burning in his eyes when he states this, a dark, unnameable sort of triumph that makes the girl shudder. Quickly she tries to hide the feeling away, but her uncle has already detected it. "You understand how important this is, don't you, Janna?" he asks her, his tone sharp and his eyes suspicious. "You understand what this is all about?"  
  
She hesitates with her answer, thinking that she does and in the same time doesn't. All her life, Janna has heard people talk about the girl Angelus, the devil with the innocent face, has killed so many decades ago, this one of whose beauty and loveliness everybody still spoke with heartfelt grief although no one living has ever seen her. Sometimes she wonders about this strange devotion to a dead woman, but whenever she mentions her doubts to one of the other gypsies they tell her that she should feel ashamed for so little commitment to her kin.  
  
(("This is what comes of sending the girl to a school instead of teaching her at home. Soon she will be one of these rational, computer-obsessed Americans!"))  
  
"Vengeance?" she finally asks, thinking about the last time her uncle had lectured her about this. She had found an old picture of the demon Anyanka back then and openly admired the delicately shaped face and the deep cobalt blue eyes that had lured out so seductively to her. Unthinkable that such a beautiful creature could be evil, but Enyos has made no doubt about that (("They don't care about justice. Remember that Janna, demons are foul things, just acting out of cruelty without any thought about the consequences. It doesn't interest them if they are doing the right thing or not, they just want to see humans suffer.")). Very often Janna doesn't understand everything her uncle tells her at once but she tries hard. She doesn't want to disappoint him and with him her people. "And in addition to this, he would be really really pissed at us if he lost his soul again, wouldn't he?" she adds of a sudden impulse, proud of logical conclusion.   
  
She doesn't understand the reaction it provokes.   
  
"This isn't about fear, girl", her uncle snaps angrily, taking a threatening step towards her. His black eyes scream fury and promises of punishment at her as he takes her by her sleeve and shakes her roughly. "He took our most beloved daughter from us, he cruelly robbed us our child and now he must pay for the pain he caused us! Do you understand that, Janna?" He stares wildly at her, tiny flecks of spittle on his cheek. "Blood is thicker than water, stronger than law, more important than everything and no true gypsy would ever forget the threads of debt and responsibility, life and death between himself and his kin. Your foolish American friends might think of vengeance as nothing more than petty payback, but you should know better. Vengeance is justice, a holy duty. It's divine and therefore Angelus´ suffering must be as eternal as ours is. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS?"  
  
She cringes slightly at the shout, her face even paler than before. "I understand", she whispers fearfully, her eyes wide and terrified. "I understand, uncle..."  
  
"Good." Eventually Enyos lets her go. Wiping the spittle from his cheek, he turns away from her. "Be sure not to forget it ever again."  
  
"Never", she promises fiercely, but he has already began to walk away from her with long, angry steps. Her eyes follow him until he had vanished out of her side before they return to the dying sun.  
  
She is an oddly beautiful girl.  
  
But she is even more than that. She is Janna of the Kalderash people, one of the last descendants of her tribe and although she often fails to understand everything at once, she is determined to learn. The clan is older than her, would live beyond her, and the idea of questioning its authority doesn't even enter her mind. She is Janna and she will make her people proud.  
  
It is only twenty-five years later when she looks into the disturbingly blue eyes of an overly British English librarian that she asks herself if this enough.  
  
FINIS 


End file.
